Sunday, March 31, 2013

This week’s GOP autopsy report, commissioned by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, is a great start in the much-needed task of rebranding the Republican Party. As the chairman acknowledged, “the way we communicate our principles isn’t resonating widely enough” and “we have to be more inclusive.” The report contains 219 recommendations to “connect people to our principles.” To achieve that goal, the party will need a strategic vision of how voters think about politics, which is something that the report lacks. For that, the GOP can learn a lot from another American passion: baseball.

This year, about 75 million Americans will go to the baseball stadium to watch a ballgame, about the same number as those who will vote in next year’s election. We rarely think about why someone becomes a baseball fan, or why they root for a certain team. Nor do we usually think about why someone chooses to vote for a certain political party. But it’s actually a very useful exercise.

When it comes to baseball, fan loyalty has almost nothing to do with the brain, and almost everything to do with the heart. In all of history, there’s never been a baseball fan who rooted for his team because it had the lowest ticket prices, or because it had the most taxpayer-friendly stadium deal, or because its players did the most community service. For the vast majority of Americans, rooting for a baseball team — not to mention, voting for a political party — isn’t really a rational choice; it’s more of a statement of personal identity — a statement telling the world, “This is who I am.” And for most people, defining “who I am” starts with family and community, before branching out into areas like race, age, gender, and class.

Family is pretty straightforward. If your mom and dad are Yankee fans, you’re almost certainly a Yankee fan. The same is true in politics. If your mom and dad are Republicans, you’re almost certainly a Republican.

Community is also pretty straightforward. If you grew up in, say, Philadelphia, chances are pretty great you’re a Phillies fan. Likewise, someone who grew up in Republican territory like, say, suburban Dallas or rural Indiana is much more likely to become a Republican than a nearly identical person from Seattle or Santa Fe.

Cities with more than one baseball team, like New York or Chicago, show revealing breakdowns by race and gender. The racial split in Chicago between Cubs fans on the North Side and White Sox fans on the South Side is well-documented. In New York, there’s an intriguing gender gap between Mets and Yankee fans, with women gravitating a lot more to the Yanks. While there’s a few theories out there trying to explain that, one obvious answer leaps out: Yankees heartthrob Derek Jeter.

In sports, as in politics, people’s convictions can’t be conveniently reduced to who their parents are or what they look like. But those things are an important foundation, upon which more rational sentiments come into being. Once you’re attached to your team on an emotional level — seeing them as a personal reflection of who you are and what you care about most — a rational exterior comes into being through phrases like “the Red Sox are the best team because they have the most heart” or “the Republicans are the best party because they know how to create jobs.”

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Current policy is a black mark on Obama and his foreign policy/security team. I still think overall the administration has earned high marks in this area - but yes, drone policy and usage is absolutely worth a full letter grade against that total score in my book.

Wow, "a full letter grade" for killing hundreds if not thousands of innocents. That's harsh. Almost as harsh as liberals wanting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al., dead for their alleged transgressions.

You don't hold Obama in contempt for the things he does that you disagree with.

I disagree with him on some things. I agree with him on others. And I try to say so in both cases. I think his use of drones (not the drones as a tactic, but the targeting decisions) have been both contemptible and counterproductive. The Bradley Manning thing turns my stomach. I didn't vote for Obama, in large part, because of those two issues. But I also have no illusions that Romney would not have done the same or worse as CiC.
Edit: Coke to Treder.

You don't hold Obama in contempt for the things he does that you disagree with. You don't treat him with scorn. You just kind of shrug, maybe say a few words to slap him on the wrist, and move on. He's not thought to be a Horrible Person as are Bush and Romney et al.

Now I understand. If you disagree with something a politician does there is only scorn. Between adoration and scorn nothing is allowed. The world is black and white, grey is for losers. So says the libertarian/conservative mindset. It all makes sense now.

I'm adamantly opposed to drones, but still vote Democrat. It sucks, but oh well. This shouldn't be too hard to explain on a forum full of libertarians who are also hardcore Republicans.

Precisely.

The only person I ever agree with 100% on any policy question is myself.

It's somehow shocking or immoral that in a system where we elect people to represent our views, I support and defend the people I agree with 80/20 on policy and castigate the ones I agree with 20/80 (if not worse) on policy?

What is Obama's total casualty rate with Drones+Afganistan as compared to Bush II? Bush I? On a rate basis, if you please. I assume that everyone is killing non-innocents at roughly the same rate of 0.1%.

I didn't vote for Clinton (Bill) the second time because of that asprin factory. Obama's a monster, but he's kinda like a Frankenstein's monster in that you'd like to hope that it's not really all his fault. Bush and (presumably) Romney were more like Dracula.

Now I understand. If you disagree with something a politician does there is only scorn.
According to liberal teachings as learned from their examples of how they treat Republicans, yes. Obviously.

Because no college-educated or wanna-be (or accomplished) academic or intelligent liberal on this board has ever once bloviated endlessly on the meticulous reasoning behind why they find conservatives wrong. It's just been scorn. No full paragraphs, no theses, no high-fallutin' reasoning, no philosophy, no loving ourselves talking and our fingers going for comma apocalypse, no attempts at reasoning for the lurkers at all. Just scorn. Just LOLs and "nonsense", that's all you see.

This is an embarrassing point to try and make, Ray. I can even make fun of my own lefties (which is what I was kinda doing to formerly dp and the Dronarions in #3188, sorry guys!) while showing how stupid the accusation sounds.

Wow, all that work to address a point that hadn't been made. Impressive work. And better yet, the diametrically opposite point had been made.

It's not that a lot of modern liberals don't like or don't criticize the drone strikes -- it's that they barely, if at all, connect them to Barack Obama the person and human being, and architect of the policy.(*) As noted, they're like the virgin birth.

Which is why we see all the weasel words even here, in lieu of direct criticism of Barack Obama himself, the architect of the policy. It isn't the drone strikes themselves, it's targeted assassinations. The conservatives would have been even worse. It's not just Obama, it's his team, too. And on and on.

Nor has there really been that much criticism of the drone strikes. Compare and contrast drone criticism with the fainting couches in the "rape" thread or the regular taking of "offense" at some random cracker tweet or Don Imus. Or for that matter the bladder voiding over a newspaper using the word "suspect" to describe a suspect in this very thread.

Wow, "a full letter grade" for killing hundreds if not thousands of innocents. That's harsh. Almost as harsh as liberals wanting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al., dead for their alleged transgressions.

Wow, a whole, full letter grade?? Is that better or worse than double secret probation?

(*) In the same way that literally every policy choice of a non-leftist is entirely personalized and denominated a direct reflection on the character of the official.

I can't think of anybody here, right or left, who defends the invasion or thinks it was a good idea.

I can, but that's a subject for another day.

I think Diogenes can at least pause and rest his feet for awhile. There were plenty of people on BTF defending that war in 2003, for the same principal reasons that most of the rest of the country did: False information that they weren't sufficiently skeptical about; and real knowledge of what Saddam Hussein had been doing to his own people and to neighboring peoples beyond the issue of stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. I wish I could say that I wasn't among the insufficiently skeptical at that time, but I'm not a self-revisionist.

As for drones, if that were the worst thing that Bush or Obama had ever done, the world should be counting its blessings, since the alternative to drones would in reality almost certainly have been even worse in terms of innocent lives lost. I certainly wish that they'd had such weapons in World War II as a substitute for carpet bombing, and probably so do a lot of Germans and Japanese.

Or for that matter the bladder voiding over a newspaper using the word "suspect" to describe a suspect in this very thread.

As opposed to what, counting how many times Obama didn't say the word "terror"? Or the definition of a "marriage"? We say tit, they say tat.

I won't speak for everyone, but at no point have I emphasized the official difference between "person of interest" vs. "suspect" because I was rooting for a particular strain of perpetrator or dreading another for political reasons.

Why do you think the bombing investigators made such a sustained effort to reject the word "suspect"? Just to piss off conservatives and their unique, truth-detecting vocabulary? Does Boston have the only leftist, bladder-voiding police force in the United States?

But since words are words are words, and since their meaning is their meaning is their meaning, I'll repeat my question from the other page: Was Mohamed Atta a 9/11 victim? Please restrict your answer to the dictionary definition; any other "weasel words" would be "sad" and "incredible."

Fair enough. The funny thing is, I almost wonder if it is domestic if it will be someone so far right they curve around to the left,...

Politics in the US doesn't work that way any more. I'll bet you can't think of a group of over, say, a hundred people who reach that point on that curve, let along one that's every actually bombed anything. It's possible I'm missing some group, but I don't think so. Our political ossification has even reached the fringes.

Are we nearly done bashing the New York Post? If so, is there similar concern over the New York Daily News?

Is there any difference between the two papers? Big joke not long ago was a guy in an office I did some business in regularly bought both papers, and bumped into a woman he was trying to impress. Under his arm, of the two papers, only the Post was showing. He actually thought it would speak better of him if he slid the Post behind the News. It took two weeks for that little escapade to stop provoking laughter.

Something sure to provoke no strong opinions here.

Fixed seats are stupid. What's important is to provide some maneuvering room so people with bad backs don't die by being locked into the wrong position for hours on hours, without crushing the legs of people behind them. This should be easy.

I think Diogenes can at least pause and rest his feet for awhile. There were plenty of people on BTF defending that war in 2003, for the same principal reasons that most of the rest of the country did: False information that they weren't sufficiently skeptical about; and real knowledge of what Saddam Hussein had been doing to his own people and to neighboring peoples beyond the issue of stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. I wish I could say that I wasn't among the insufficiently skeptical at that time, but I'm not a self-revisionist.

I should note that I 100% was on board. I completely believed Iraq had a nuclear program all ready to go. I completely trusted the Bush Administration on all this stuff.

Funny enough, that's one reason I stood up for Obama vs. Clinton in the 2008 Texas Primacaucus. Now, it may very well be that if Obama had had the chance to vote for the AUMF he would have, pragmatist that he is, but he didn't, and it's one factor in his being President today.

Yeah, I supported Obama because he'd been against the war in Iraq. I really think absent that gap in Hillary's resume she'd have been the nominee and very likely the president.

I was against the war in Iraq in 2003 not because I thought that Saddam wasn't an awful guy or that he didn't have chemical weapons (I didn't think he had an active nuclear program) but because I was really concerned about what would happen after we won and toppled the regime. It's really, really bad when a modestly well informed 20 year old once and future college dropout gives the aftermath of a war more thought than high level officials at the DOD.

eta: Heck, the reason why I worked for Dean in the 2004 cycle was because he was one of the first to come out and say the war was a really dumb idea. Even though a lot of Dems voted for the AUMF against Iraq, a great deal of the base had very strong reservations against it.

“We know that al Qaeda has camps with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border,” Gohmert agreed. “We know that people are now being trained to come in and act like Hispanics when they’re radical Islamists. We know these things are happening, and it’s just insane to not protect ourselves and make sure that people come in — as most people do, they want the freedoms we have.”

because I was really concerned about what would happen after we won and toppled the regime.

A good friend of mine - who I had been arguing with regarding the war in Iraq - declared victory when we invaded and "won" right away. He asked me what I thought now that it was over. My response, "It has just begun, it goes downhill from here."

Just to clarify. When you and others of your ilk directly call people you are talking with there is an implied intent to offend* - which makes it, what for it, offensive. I am not offended but it is still and act of offense.

When others cheered her death (I was not one of them, though I defend their right to do so without being called names) they were expressing an opinion and were not trying to offend* her or anyone else, merely expressing their scorn, though clearly some were offended (thus in another sense making it offensive).

We can now spend many pages uselessly arguing over the meaning of "offensive", because that makes for riveting reading.

* I am giving my opinion on people's motivations, but clearly I can not read their minds so hey feel free to correct me if, for example, someone really was trying to offend the Iron Lady or her family and friends by posting on a random baseball site their glee at her death.

When others cheered her death (I was not one of them, though I defend their right to do so without being called names)

Wait, why would you have a right to not be called a name? People have a right to cheer her death, but I certainly have a right to call them names. And they have a right to call me a name. And so on. The issue is if government *punishes* or *bans* cheering a death, which is different and obviously not something I would support.

Which is why we see all the weasel words even here, in lieu of direct criticism of Barack Obama himself, the architect of the policy.

The fact that you don't bother to acknowledge the criticism does not mean it isn't occurring.

Here: Obama's over-execution of the drone policy has on more than one occasion caused me to absolutely doubt his humanity or any interest I have had in speaking to him on this issue or any other. I have told this fact to complete stranger lefties prior to stating so here.

Did someone die once because someone put the chicken next to the bread?

Checkers at my neighborhood markets seem to be neurotic on the subject of putting chicken in a separate plastic bag or two so it doesn't leak. Matters not if it's not leaking now or is unlikely to in the five minutes it'll take me to drive home. I don't entirely understand this, but assume it has to do with some deep-seated sanitary taboo.

Nor has there really been that much criticism of the drone strikes. Compare and contrast drone criticism with the fainting couches in the "rape" thread or the regular taking of "offense" at some random cracker tweet or Don Imus. Or for that matter the bladder voiding over a newspaper using the word "suspect" to describe a suspect in this very thread.

The difference is that there's almost always a group of dead-enders ready to defend things like this in the threads. I think 'zop is the only one defending the drone strikes.

Regardless of what you think of "extreme overt acts of nationalism", the city has just been through a horrific situation. It's not OK for them to spend 90 seconds celebrating that, in spite of it, they're still here, fighting?

Seriously, people need to stake a step back and chill the #### out once in a while. Just like not every prayer in school is horrific religious indoctrination of our precious children and the first step down the slippery slope, not every mass singing of the national anthem is a giant middle finger to the rest of the world or some wicked intent to proclaim how awesome we are. Sometimes people just need to feel good, connected to the people around them, even if only for 90 ####### seconds.

Not everything that happens in this world is a signal for people to run to their positions and start complaining about it. Let one go once in a while.

Regardless of what you think of "extreme overt acts of nationalism", the city has just been through a horrific situation. It's not OK for them to spend 90 seconds celebrating that, in spite of it, they're still here, fighting?

um. . .

Seriously, people need to stake a step back and chill the #### out once in a while.

I think you need to take a step back and chill the #### out.

All I said was that I (me, myself, and I) have never been comfortable around it. Where did I say it wasn't allowed? Where did I say people are bastards for doing it?

Chill and let it go once in awhile instead of complaining about what I said.

The difference is that there's almost always a group of dead-enders ready to defend things like this in the threads. I think 'zop is the only one defending the drone strikes.

I'm more or less okay with drone strikes. I'm not wild about it, so I don't really feel the need to be defending it.

I think that they're generally better than cruise missiles/invasions and generally worse than trials in an international court of law. They probably beat most realistic alternatives for me. I wish there was better oversight, but I think that generally they've been used responsibly.

Is it possible to be both pro-drone strikes and creeped out by that national anthem?

No.

Ahem. I wouldn't call myself pro-drone, possibly apathetic to it. I've never really cared about drone strikes but probably lean towards being okay with them rather than not okay with them. Or what tshipman said.

Obama's a monster, but he's kinda like a Frankenstein's monster in that you'd like to hope that it's not really all his fault.

loFl. Why was my comment pushed back on so vehemently, again?

By whom? Not I. You see, I don't worry bat what generic Liberals of generic Conservatives say. These categories are meaningless. One person here with liberal opinions defending Obama (or whatever dastardly thing you are accusing them of) doesn't mean that other liberal oriented folks agree.

I'm having a hard time buying that singing the national anthem isn't an overt act of nationalism and is just some kumbaya moment instead.

Different people have different thoughts when either singing it or listening to it. I usually think murder when some "Grammy Award Winning" pop star butchers it beyond recognition, but I can sometimes get a chill down my spine when I hear a Robert Merrill or a military band version, which is how the tune is supposed to be sung or played.

But to your point, I think you're confusing patriotism with nationalism, which I've always considered two distinct sentiments. As the Major in Fawlty Towers might put it: Hate nationalism, love patriotism.

Well, yeah, but that's why I said "as a whole." And, anyway, if we're limiting our inquiry to number of deaths, the baseline number to compare post-2003 to is not 0. People were dying under Hussein's Iraq to begin with.

I'm actually coming around to the point where I cringe every time we call soldiers 'heroes', just for being soldiers. I've said before that the whole 'babykiller/spit on a vet angle' is not an undefensible position. It's even more defensible when there's no draft.

I'm LONG past the point where I won't say something when we say people in Iraq or Afghanistan are fighting for our freedoms.

Well, yeah, but that's why I said "as a whole." And, anyway, if we're limiting our inquiry to number of deaths, the baseline number to compare post-2003 to is not 0. People were dying under Hussein's Iraq to begin with.

Yeah hippie, prove that a single poor Iraqi slob killed during our great war of adventure would otherwise be alive today. You can't do it.

Ahem. I wouldn't call myself pro-drone, possibly apathetic to it. I've never really cared about drone strikes but probably lean towards being okay with them rather than not okay with them. Or what tshipman said.

If there's a case to be made that replacing drone strikes with helicoptering people in, kicking in doors and shooting/grenading up the place would result in less innocent people being maimed and killed, I haven't seen it. I'm skeptical it exists. Harking back to Hiroshima, if you're maiming and slaughtering people, I don't make much distinction for how you're doing it. I don't see why I would.

Well, yeah, but that's why I said "as a whole." And, anyway, if we're limiting our inquiry to number of deaths, the baseline number to compare post-2003 to is not 0. People were dying under Hussein's Iraq to begin with.

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch peg the deaths under Saddam at 250 to 500k -- more than half during the 1991 rebellion post-Kuwait. Estimates post-2003 put the toll at 150k to 300k.... soo.... when you consider Saddam's numbers were accrued over a 30 year period, the pacing is not good.

2013 may be a little late in Western history to start drawing a distinction between combatants and non-combatants, but that doesn't mean the distinction is invalid as an ideal of conduct. There is something soul-destroying about a campaign of individual extrajudicial murders, even if the victims are all criminals and the murders are precisely limited to them. War is hell, too, and I'm pacifist enough to be greatly troubled by any kind of deliberate lethal force. Nor do I support the death penalty. But even so, I'd argue, if the realm of killings by the state exists, there should be distinctions within that realm. I could be wrong, I could be convinced otherwise, but I'd hold that killings without due process outside of warfare are the hallmark of terrorists and totalitarians. The more the US engages in them, the less I respect the US.

Even if those numbers are accurate, coalition soldiers did not execute 150K-300K Iraqi civilians. The "pacing" is irrelevant.

Dead is dead...

Look, in a vacuum -- if it were free and bloodless, sure -- I'd say the US is better off with Saddam gone... but I do find it a bit off-putting that so many Americans have become telepathic in regard to the views of Iraqis. It also begs the question as why "we" seemed so unpopular pretty much up until we left.

I imagine the opinions of Iraqis run the gamut -- I'm quite sure there are plenty who are thrilled and thankful Saddam is gone, but I also imagine there are plenty who don't really care about politics, much less geopolitics, that would prefer to go to the market without dodging car bombs.

Is it possible to be both pro-drone strikes and creeped out by that national anthem? The impulse captured by that anthem is why wars happen.

Well the US anthem is a fairly terrible song. I still get goosebumps when it is sung/played right, but objectively I don't think it a good song at all.

Are the Iraqi people as a whole not better off now than they were in 2002?

So many things wrong with this. First of all it should be are they better off now that they would have been without the invasion, not as compared to a point in the past. Obviously that is much harder to do, but it is not like Iraq would have stood still since 2002.

Second according to what metric? "Better off" means many things, just wondering what you mean by it.

Of course the biggest problem is the unstated "ends justify the means" embedded in your question. So I ask, Ray do the ends justify the means? If no then why does it matter if they are better off now, if so then how far does that extend?

As an add on I love this sort of goal post moving common to the class of war hawks. Iraq was a spectacular example. Everytime pesky reality showed up the goals posts were moved. From the inspections angle, all the way to no "are they better off". Oh well.

Did you know that Diogenes is Ramon Ortiz's middle name? I didn't know that until today, when I looked him up on B-R because the Jays had to resort to using his carcass in a game last night. This is the same Ramon Diogenes Ortiz that didn't even pitch in the majors last year, and the same one who put up a 78 ERA+ over the five seasons before that in which he was active. To top it all off, he's the 16th pitcher the Jays have used already, in only 15 games.

Sorry to bring baseball into this thread, but I just wanted to be the first Jays fan to state publicly that they won't even be in the race this year, let alone make the playoffs. I can give you a multitude of reasons why I believe that, and their 6-9 record isn't one of them.

Which is why it should be limited to ballgames, with the additional lyrics " and the home of the brave PLAY BALL!"

I'd lean more toward the Kumbaya interpretation of that hockey game than the Horst-Wessel-Lied interpretation. If they'd started with Kumbaya and been drowned out by Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue, that would be troubling, I grant.

I'll be what I consider slightly more fair (if more wishy-washy) in answer to Ray's question in that I don't think anyone has any goddamned idea if the people of Iraq are better off or not. Saying definitively one way is as stupid as saying so the other.

I don't think that's the question, being unanswerable. The question involves the discrete event of our invasion presented honestly as a justifiable event, which it most certainly was not.

Also, as Ray traffics in honest debate, were the lives of the people of Iraq really anyone's main point? I somehow missed that as the rallying cry over something else. And even if it was, isn't that the sort of thing the Libertarians love Paul's foreign policy for? "Not our business or our taxpayers' money's business"? But now you're arguing for less Iraqi deaths as a good reason to march our lives and money over there, Ray?

Man, this is the same sort of cup-shifting we saw before the war--it's not about WMD, it's about Saddam's connection to OBL....don't like that one? Then how about this? Saddam's just a bad dude, and we're doing what's best for the Iraqis...yeah, that sounds kinda bullshitty to us, too. How about all of those WMDs? Are you scared? Smoking gun, form of mushroom cloud, and all that.
===

Seriously. There's scant evidence that we're killing only 'high-level' targets in the drone attacks. If you're going to engage in this war-without-borders, and kill thousands of innocents in the process, you damn well better be sure that those you're killing pose some sort of actual threat to the US. I've posted this before-- it pretty well encapsulates why I think the drones strikes are both counterproductive and morally reprehensible. We're inflicting events like Boston on innocents in sovereign nations on a near-constant basis-- but somehow the Boston bomber is a moral monster, and we're Freedom and Jesus.

2013 may be a little late in Western history to start drawing a distinction between combatants and non-combatants, but that doesn't mean the distinction is invalid as an ideal of conduct. There is something soul-destroying about a campaign of individual extrajudicial murders, even if the victims are all criminals and the murders are precisely limited to them. War is hell, too, and I'm pacifist enough to be greatly troubled by any kind of deliberate lethal force. Nor do I support the death penalty. But even so, I'd argue, if the realm of killings by the state exists, there should be distinctions within that realm. I could be wrong, I could be convinced otherwise, but I'd hold that killings without due process outside of warfare are the hallmark of terrorists and totalitarians. The more the US engages in them, the less I respect the US.

Yes, exactly this.

Barack Obama intentionally killed a 16-year-old American citizen (*) and admits to no oversight power with respect to his ability to continue to engage in such intentional, targeted killings. Such a thing is entirely indefensible and an utter outrage.

The seminal feature of the Iraq war was its hucksterism. Not just the non-existent WMD, but the "We'll be greeted with hosannas," "We can do this with a quarter as many troops as we used in Desert Storm," "Mission Accomplished" when the war'd barely begun, the complete lack of any plan for post-initial engagement governance, etc.

That and all the "elite" institutions, including the press and infotanment vehicles, and Tony Blair licking the government's boots during the run-up (*) made it a quintessential 21st century engagement.

(*) And the murky private forces to whom war-ish activities were outsourced.